DJ Phaze

Friday 7pm 

DJ Phaze

DJ Phaze - Musical bio
I grew up in Paterson in a big family with five sisters and one brother where we had regular “get together parties” (at least monthly) where we played music on the family stereo and danced trying to replicate the dance moves from Soul Train and Dance Fever and made our house the weekend hangout.  I was always fascinated by gadgets and audio and got my first boom box as a birthday present and began recording (and perfecting the “pause edit” of my favorite music off the airwaves, from DJ Paco – Disco 92 on WKTU, Disco Showcase with Mr Magic on WHBI, Tony Humphries & Shep Pettibone on 98.7 Kiss FM’s Master Mix Show and WBLS with Merlin Bob, Marley Marl.

My DJ Turning point was my eighth grade graduation where I first saw a DJ in action, his name was DJ Master Blaster and he was rocking songs like Funkadelic, “One Nation…” along with our eighth grade anthem by McFadden and Whitehead “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now”.
Starting in high school, I worked in an electronics store in Paterson where I got hooked on DJ Hardware and bought my first real DJ setup, Crown power, Technics 1200s and numerous mixers from Gemini, Numark, GLI and finally settled on the classic Urei 1620 mixer (which I still have but have moved to a Bozak).

During my sophomore year in high school, I started hanging out with different DJ Crews starting with Imaginary Sounds and ultimately starting my own crew “Sounds of The City”.  During the early eighties, there were big parties every weekend with different DJ crews where the musical competition was intense and I met many great DJs that I still socialize with to this day, including many DJs on this site such as DJNICE, DJ Tab, DJ Danny G Stylz along some new friends from NYCRhythm.com.  During this time we had many gigs, parties & “residencies” from “Club 203”, Don’s Athletic Club, Kalibari, Masonic Temple and ultimately “The First Step” which was our little melting pot of various NYC clubs where we hung out and fed our musical appetites in places such as The Funhouse, Foxes, Zanzibar, Roseland Ballroom, 1018, Northmore’s, Zanzibar and the Paradise Garage. 

During my college years, I attended many deep house parties hosted by the Kappa’s Alphas, and Sigmas at Rutgers University and I DJ’ed a few parties at Montclair State College for several black Organizations. 
In an effort to monetize my passion in the late 80’s, I attended and graduated from Center for the Media Arts and landed dual internships at Chelsea Recording where I met Billy Joel and several rock and roll bands and Clinton Recording where I met many stars from Whitney Houston, George Benson, Luther Vandross to Eric Clapton.

Ultimately I left the music scene in the early 90s due to familial circumstances of having and ultimately losing my first daughter to leukemia in 1999.  Throughout this journey I didn’t realize that music was my therapy through many tough times but eventually rediscovered that passion through my good friend DJ Ron V in 2005 who helped reignite my passion for DJ-ing and creating musical experiences and led me to launch my first music website www.soulfulbalance.com.
Thanks and kudos to www.nycrhythm.com for supporting this rebirth during these chaotic times, I look forward to many shared musical journeys starting with Soulful Balance Sessions.